Katharine Birbalsingh

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Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Birbalsingh (* 1973 in New Zealand ) is a British teacher , blogger and publicist who writes about the British education system . She is the headmistress of Michaela Community School , a free school in the London Borough of Brent . Brent is one of two London boroughs where ethnic minorities make up the majority of the population.

Life

Birbalsingh was born in New Zealand as the elder of two daughters of the teacher Frank Birbalsingh from Guyana and his wife Norma, a nurse from Jamaica , and grew up in Canada . Her grandfather, Ezrom S. Birbalsingh, was the director of the Canadian School of Mission in Better Hope, Demerara , Guyana. When she was fifteen, she moved to the United Kingdom, where her father was a visiting scholar at the University of Warwick .

She studied French and Philosophy at the University of Oxford . After graduating, she settled in the UK.

She was best known for her blog To Miss With Love , where she anonymously wrote about her experience as a teacher at an Inner City Secondary School in London. She achieved national fame after speaking at the Conservative Party conference in 2010, where she supported the party's education policy and criticized the British state education system, whereupon she lost her job.

After her release, she founded an English free school (state-funded school independent of local authorities) under the name Michaela Community School in the London district of Brent, after the projects in Lambeth and Wandsworth failed because of opposition.

She writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph . Her book To Miss with Love , published in March 2011 , which describes her experiences during a school year, became an instant bestseller : It was voted Book of the Week and broadcast as a series on BBC 4 radio.

Birbalsingh is a representative of the traditional teaching methods as ED Hirsch in 1999 in his book The Schools We Need and Why We Do not Have Them ( The schools that we need and why we have not ) requests. For Hirsch, the reason why most students end up at Community College rather than university is not due to innate abilities or family background, but rather the lack of basic knowledge of cultural terms and concepts for academic advancement. The book showed her what goes wrong in school: Education is teaching the children knowledge and not teaching them skills. She regretted that Michael Gove - a supporter of ED Hirsch - was replaced as Minister of Education in 2014 and that his work could not be completed.

“ I failed hundreds of children in my life because I was part of a system that made children fail. I have made up my mind never to let another child fail again, and if I succeed, the Michaela School will not only have saved you, but me too. It is possible. We just have to think differently. "

- Katharine Birbalsingh, The Spectator March 19, 2016

Awards

Publications

  • Katherine Bing (pseudonym): Singleholic , chick lit novel, Hansib Publishing (Caribbean) 2009, ISBN 978-1906190156
  • To Miss with Love , Penguin Books 2011, ISBN 978-0-670-91899-7
  • Katherine Birbalsingh et al .: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way . John Catt Educational Ltd, Woodbridge (Suffolk) 2016, ISBN 978-1909717961
  • Katharine Birbalsingh et al .: Michaela: The Battle For Western Education . Tiger Teachers Take Two: The Michaela Way . John Catt Educational Ltd, Woodbridge (Suffolk) 2020, ISBN 978-1-912906-21-5 )

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ peoplepill: Katharine Birbalsingh. British teacher and blogger
  2. ↑ Speakers for Business: Biography ( Memento from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ To Miss With Love - who is she? ( Memento from October 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Katharine Birbalsingh criticises failed education system
  5. ↑ Daily Telegraph: Katharine Birbalsingh: The Fearless Woman Who Told the Truth About Teaching
  6. ^ The Sunday Times, February 20, 2011: If the lefties don't want me, I'll just go and set up my own school
  7. ^ My own Free School battle is about to commence
  8. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel: Free schools in Great Britain are supposed to stir up the old system. The money for this comes from the state , August 2011
  9. ↑ Trotskyist smears against Katharine Birbalsingh, January 22, 2012
  10. ^ Wandsworth Save Our Schools Alliance, Feb.2, 2012
  11. ↑ Katharine Birbalsingh's blog
  12. ↑ BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week; To Miss With Love
  13. ↑ ED Hirsch: The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them . Anchor Verlag 1999, ISBN 978-0385495240
  14. ↑ Excerpt from The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (English)
  15. ↑ The Seldon List 2017
  16. ↑ Edcentral UK: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Way Michaela
  17. ^ The Irish Times, February 17, 2017: What can we learn from the strictest school in Britain?
personal data
SURNAME Birbalsingh, Katharine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British teacher, blogger and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH New Zealand